Reviews

Publishers Weekly(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedIt's a tribute to Englander's verve and scope that the eight stories in his new collection, although clearly the product of one mind with a particular set of interests (Israel; American Jewry and suburbia; writing and reading; sex, survival, and the long shadow of the Shoah) never cover the same territory. Each is particular, deeply felt, and capable of pressing any number of buttons. The title story, which features a reunion of old friends, a lot of marijuana, and a series of collisions between Israel and America and Orthodoxy and laxity, starts out funny and gets funnier, until suddenly it's not a bit funny. "Sister Hills" traces an Israeli settlement from its violent founding to its bedroom community transformation and reads like a myth, simple, stark, and, like many a myth, ultimately horrifying. And as you spend a few days with the beleaguered director of "Camp Sundown," a vacation camp for elderly Jews, you'll find, as he does, that things you think you're sure about-guilt, justice, silence, and the morality of revenge-start to get fuzzy. What we talk about when we talk about Englander's collection turns out to be survival and the difficult-sometimes awful, sometimes touching-choices people make, and Englander (For the Relief of Unbearable Urges), brings a tremendous range and capacity to surprise to his chosen topic. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Agency. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Publishers Weekly(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reservedIt's a tribute to Englander's verve and scope that the eight stories in his new collection, although clearly the product of one mind with a particular set of interests (Israel; American Jewry and suburbia; writing and reading; sex, survival, and the long shadow of the Shoah) never cover the same territory. Each is particular, deeply felt, and capable of pressing any number of buttons. The title story, which features a reunion of old friends, a lot of marijuana, and a series of collisions between Israel and America and Orthodoxy and laxity, starts out funny and gets funnier, until suddenly it's not a bit funny. "Sister Hills" traces an Israeli settlement from its violent founding to its bedroom community transformation and reads like a myth, simple, stark, and, like many a myth, ultimately horrifying. And as you spend a few days with the beleaguered director of "Camp Sundown," a vacation camp for elderly Jews, you'll find, as he does, that things you think you're sure about-guilt, justice, silence, and the morality of revenge-start to get fuzzy. What we talk about when we talk about Englander's collection turns out to be survival and the difficult-sometimes awful, sometimes touching-choices people make, and Englander (For the Relief of Unbearable Urges), brings a tremendous range and capacity to surprise to his chosen topic. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Agency. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Library Journal(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.Much like his previous work, this newest collection of short stories from Englander (The Ministry of Special Cases) continues to explore the complexity of Jewish identity through the diasporic experience. An homage to the Raymond Carver short story titled "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love," the first story in this collection features both a secular and an ultra-Orthodox couple discussing the tenants of Judaism under a haze of alcohol and marijuana. The characters in this story oscillate between serious intellectual debate and comical tangents that lead to serious questions, setting the tone for the rest of the collection. Introspective, self-divided, and self-ironical characters recur often in Englander's stories, cutting the heaviness of the darker themes of loss and violence that permeate the narrative. Though many of the stories appear didactic in intention, a man lured into a peepshow is given a performance by his wife, former rabbis, and psychiatrists, Englander suspends the moralizing attitude, passively presenting thinly veiled parables to the reader as open-ended questions. VERDICT A wonderful collection of short stories that will appeal to fans of Etgar Keret and Jonathan Safran Foer.-Joshua Finnell, Denison Univ. Lib., Granville, OH (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.